Lone Nut Microbiologists....

[Junkdrawer]

The current FBI-Approved theory of the 2001 Anthrax attacks is that a lone nut microbiologist did it.

When I was a teenager in the 60s, the big worry was that a lone-nut physics student would somehow make an A-bomb. Well, it turned out that while the basic physics knowledge was becoming widespread, access to the materials and the necessary engineering knowledge was not widespread. False alarm.

But now there's biological WMDs. And it just so happens that 4 months ago, researchers isolated the genes that made the 1918 flu so fatal....

Scientists isolate genes that made 1918 flu lethal
Dec. 29, 2008

by Terry Devitt

By mixing and matching a contemporary flu virus with the "Spanish flu" — a virus that killed between 20 and 50 million people 90 years ago in history's most devastating outbreak of infectious disease — researchers have identified a set of three genes that helped underpin the extraordinary virulence of the 1918 virus.

Writing today (Dec. 29) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison virologists Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Tokiko Watanabe identifies genes that gave the 1918 virus the capacity to reproduce in lung tissue, a hallmark of the pathogen that claimed more lives than all the battles of World War I combined.

"Conventional flu viruses replicate mainly in the upper respiratory tract: the mouth, nose and throat. The 1918 virus replicates in the upper respiratory tract, but also in the lungs," causing primary pneumonia among its victims, says Kawaoka, an internationally recognized expert on influenza and a professor of pathobiological sciences in the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. "We wanted to know why the 1918 flu caused severe pneumonia."

...

http://www.news.wisc.edu/16103

Consider this: imagine a lone nut microbiologist who watched too much Lou Dobbs and was sure that Mexicans were destroying our country. How hard would it be for such a person to splice up a designer virus, given that the genes were already isolated?

By the way, that's a real question: how much equipment and know-how would it take?

[kestrel91316]

1. What I find curious about this swine flu is that they have said it contains

genetic components from TWO swine flu viruses, ONE avian flu virus, and ONE human flu virus. I find it a little hard to believe that this occurred naturally. It seems a bit of a stretch.

I may be wrong, but it disturbs me at the moment.

[MadHound]

2. Not unusual at all

Most viruses are natural DNA collectors. The go into a new host, find DNA they can use and make it their own. In the process not only do they alter their own DNA, but their host's as well.

[Javaman]

3. There was a second microbiologist behind the hairy mole. nt

[damntexdem]

4. A tiny biologist missing a testicle -- no wonder he wants vengeance on humanity!

;-)